Sonia hails Manmohan, says empty boasts, vitriol not his style

New Delhi (Rahnuma) : In a veiled dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday said that “fanciful boasts, self-promoting bombast and the language of abuse and vitriol” was not the style of Manmohan Singh who presided over the country’s highest economic growth rate in his tenure as Prime Minister.

“Over his (Manmohan Singh’s) decade-long tenure, he earned for India enhanced respect across the globe — not by seeking credit or kudos but by allowing his work to speak for itself. In his tenure, India recorded its highest economic growth rate ever and also saw the implementation of several rights-based legislations that gave deeper social meaning and significance to economic growth,” Gandhi said.

Her words came on the occasion of Singh being conferred with the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.

“(Yet) Not for him tall claims. Not for him empty and fanciful boasts. Not for him self-promoting bombast. Not for him falsifications of facts and history. Not for him the language of abuse and vitriol,” Gandhi said in her speech.

“Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister at a time when the country was on the edge, when its collective nerves were frayed and when its secular fabric was under assault. Within months, his persona and policies had a profound calming effect.

“The country once again had the assurance that the man at the very top was not a divisive person, that no group or individual need feel insecure,” she added.

The former Congress President also recalled late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s words to the effect that there are those who work and there are those who take credit, and that she would rather be in the first group.

She said it would not be an exaggeration to say that the foundations of Singh’s latter success were laid in the Indira Gandhi years in the Ministries of Commerce and Finance, the Planning Commission and the Reserve Bank of India.